Checking drug interactions during intake assessments for home care?

[Nurse Beth, MSN]

Dear Nurse Beth,

When intake assessments for a non-medical home care agency include obtaining a medication list, is the nurse responsible for researching drug interactions if he/she is simply performing the intake for the agency? Or is it accepted that meds would have already checked for compatibility/interactions by the prescribing MD and/or pharmacist? Thank you for your time!

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Dear Checking Drug Interactions,

Your job responsibilities are basically what your employer says they are. So first of all, check with your supervisor to clarify the job description so you can agree on and meet their expectations.

Having said that, checking for drug interactions is typically the pharmacist's job. That's what they studied (for years). By comparison, nurses take a brief Pharmacology class.

Pharmacists are by far the best qualified to do this and most pharmacists have drug-checking software programs through their employers.

Since your role is performing an intake for the agency which includes obtaining a current list of medications, this would not include researching drug interactions unless specifically directed to do so. Personally, I would not agree to do this because of the liability.

Hope this helps.

Best wishes,

Nurse Beth

[travduck, BSN, RN, CNM]

I agree with Nurse Beth but also think that if you know your drugs well, which you should it might be a good idea to do a quick scan and if something is jumping out at you to mark it and notify the pharmacist. I check my patients meds as 1) many patients are obtaining medications from multiple doctors/clinics and filling at multiple pharmacies thus increasing the possibility of not only interaction but also overdose. And 2) currently working on psych at the moment I have, in

[vampiregirl, BSN, RN]

Our software at the Home Care and Hospice agency I work for performs an interaction check with the meds. It also assigns each interaction a severity and we have parameters for time frames of physician notification for each category of severity. We just perform the notification and document such.

But, it still is helpful to have some basic pharmacology knowledge, the computer won't catch meds that could potentially be harmful to patient related to disease processes the patient may have.